Investor adopts direct approach

By IRENE CHAPPLE

Leaving school at 14 has been no handicap for mussel farming pioneer Peter Yealands - in fact it helped him become a multi-millionaire.

Yealands (his email name is "dollar" - his accountant's idea, he insists) is obviously a man who knows what he wants.

And what the 56-year-old wants right now is to raise his 1 per cent stake in Oyster Bay Marlborough Vineyards to at least 5 per cent.

Problem is, trading on the NZAX stock is low.

So last week, Yealands - a member of a prominent Blenheim family - jiggered up 50 shareholders with an offer of $2.60 a share, an offer he hopes they can't refuse.

And if they don't take him up. "Well, if we don't get enough we will send out more letters."

Company chairman Bill Falconer hadn't seen the letter. But, he mused: "Yes, that's unusual."

Yesterday, the stock closed at $2.70.

Since the start of the year, it tracked steadily upwards, from $2.10 in January, dipping to $1.79 in March, then peaking briefly at $2.76 last month.

A third of the shares are owned by Delegat's Wine Estate.

Yealands, who grows grapes in the Marlborough region, says his offer is good. "If someone wanted to sell that many off the market, the price would be way down."

Yealands' letter said he was looking to get a higher stake and "in order to do so, given the low volume of trading of the stock on the NZAX board, we believe it is necessary to approach shareholders directly".

Yealands' lawyer, Steven Startup, said the approach was not one he had tried before but they could not think how else to encourage shareholders to sell.

Yealands' play would cost him about $1 million.

"It's not a major play or anything. It's just tiddlywinks."

But he has a history of turning tiddlywinks into big bucks.

Leaving school to help his sick father run the family grocery store, Yealands pioneered marine farming in the late 1960s, while the industry was still dredging and the biggest market was pubs.

He is a property developer whose "jewel in the crown" is a vineyard just outside Blenheim that he bought for $500,000 then landscaped, including adding a lake. Yealands also dabbled in the technology of mussel farming - creating the "buoys' that can be seen outlining a marine farm - but turned his attentions to viticulture about four years ago.

He grows savignon blanc and pinot gris grapes and is negotiating with a winemaker - he won't say which one - to create and sell his own label, to be called Station Creek.

Meanwhile, he's waiting to buy up more of Oyster Bay because the wine industry "has a fantastic future".